Arch Linux

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

What's a good power manager for Xfce?

I need something that will help me set power plans (for lack of a better term) for battery and AC power that controls the brightness, HDD spins, fan, and all that good stuff (basically anything that will help lower power consumption). The criteria is:

~Controls more than just brightness (if that really matters and helps battery life enough to be worth it)

~Allows automatic power plans for AC and battery power

~Lightweight

~Fast

~Easy to control from Xfce panel (notification area counts)

Any help would be appreciated.

CursedMonkey

Member

Registered: 2008-08-30

Posts: 45

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

I use laptop-mode-tools with acpid to control all those values. I'm not sure if there's anyway to control it from the xfce panel. If you prefer something with a gui, you can try gnome-power-manager.

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

How good is gnome-power-manager exactly? And how does it compare to laptop-mode-tools? Any other suggestions?

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,648

Website

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

I use gnome-power-manager and have no complaints.  Does everything you ask but may pull in a few deps...

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PGP Key: F99FFE0FEAE999BD | I develop pacman - buy me a drink!

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

Alright I'm installing gnome-power-manager at this moment. I'll probably post with updates. I checked out the website and this seems to be exactly what I needed. Thanks!

dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

xfce has its own power manager. svn is in AUR: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=22061
i made a request to include it in goodies group a while ago http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/12245

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There shouldn't be any reason to learn more editor types than emacs or vi -- mg (1)
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resadent

Member

Registered: 2008-05-17

Posts: 35

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

This is great, now I have no excuses for not using xfce4 on my laptop. Thanks a lot for the info

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

Np xfce is like gnome done right. IMO, kde is way too bloated only for features kde4 doesn't yet have, gnome is more for beginners to Linux, xfce is like real gnome, and lxde is just anything you want it to be, I guess. I'll have to try it out and get it working well on my system to have a real opinion on it, though.

Redrazor39

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 108

Re: What's a good power manager for Xfce?

Alright, right now I have a problem with gnome-power-manager. It's almost like it doesn't have permission to change the brightness and stuff, so nothing happens when I change it. On the bright side my Fn brightness keys show an on screen meter when used, but unfortunately there is no change in actual brightness of the screen. For some reason it's just not working. Obviously, if this doesn't happen, then gnome-power-manager will not be able to dim the screen when idle, etc.

How can I make this work?